5068

Metallica, circa St. Anger?

5069

Apologies if this has been posted before.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TrumpInvestigation/wiki/doc

5070

Associates of President Trump and his company have turned over documents to federal investigators that reveal two previously unreported contacts from Russia during the 2016 campaign, according to people familiar with the matter.

In one case, Trump’s personal attorney and a business associate exchanged emails weeks before the Republican National Convention about the lawyer possibly traveling to an economic conference in Russia that would be attended by top Russian financial and government leaders, including President Vladi­mir Putin, according to people familiar with the correspondence.

In the other case, the same Trump attorney, Michael Cohen, received a proposal in late 2015 for a Moscow residential project from a company founded by a billionaire who once served in the upper house of the Russian parliament, these people said. The previously unreported inquiry marks the second proposal for a Trump-branded Moscow project that was delivered to the company during the presidential campaign and has since come to light.

Cohen declined the invitation to the economic conference, citing the difficulty of attending so close to the GOP convention, according to people familiar with the matter. And Cohen rejected the Moscow building plan.

5071
5072

2 articles from today:

Manafort in debt to Russian Oligarch, and currying favor?

A source close to Manafort confirmed their authenticity. Excerpts from these emails were first reported by The Washington Post, but the full text of these exchanges, provided to The Atlantic, shows that Manafort attempted to leverage his leadership role in the Trump campaign to curry favor with a Russian oligarch close to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Manafort was deeply in debt, and did not earn a salary from the Trump campaign.

Manafort moving on to (perhaps) use code names for payoffs may be rather incriminating, depending upon other developments

Russians had access to the Pentagon’s Information Security Software suite source code?

The Russian review of ArcSight’s source code, the closely guarded internal instructions of the software, was part of HPE’s effort to win the certification required to sell the product to Russia’s public sector, according to the regulatory records seen by Reuters and confirmed by a company spokeswoman…

…A spokeswoman for the Pentagon’s Defense Information Systems Agency, which maintains the military’s networks, said HPE did not disclose the review to the U.S. agency. Military contracts do not specifically require vendors to divulge whether foreign nations have reviewed source code, the spokeswoman said.

The U.S. military agency itself did not require a source code review before purchasing ArcSight and generally does not place such requirements on tech companies for off-the-shelf software like ArcSight, the Pentagon spokeswoman said. Instead, DISA evaluates the security standards used by the vendors, she said.

Somewhat normal behavior, and yet also illustrative of the dangers of outsourcing National Security.

5073

Wow. Is this why they read so much into PizzaGate? This totally reads like code words:

On July 31, Kilimnik and Manafort corresponded again to firm up their plans for a dinner meeting in New York on August 2. “I need about two hours,” Kilimnik wrote to Manafort on July 31, “because it is a long caviar story to tell.”

5074

Great…

5075

Of course, the White House and Congress will immediately convene an emergency commission to prevent this attack on our democracy from going any further, right? Riiiiiight?

5076

I think Donny Jr. needs to go “moose hunting” again and get word from his Russian handler about what to do.

5077

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The special counsel investigating whether Russia tried to sway the 2016 U.S. election has taken over FBI inquiries into a former British spy’s dossier of allegations of Russian financial and personal links to President Donald Trump’s campaign and associates, sources familiar with the inquiry told Reuters.

A report compiled by former MI6 officer Christopher Steele identified Russian businessmen and others whom U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded are Russian intelligence officers or working on behalf of the Russian government.

A spokesman for special counsel Robert Mueller declined comment. The FBI also declined comment.

Three sources with knowledge of Mueller’s probe said his investigators have assumed control of multiple inquiries into allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the election to benefit Trump, a Republican.

5078

Tech support staff discovered the suspected breach after Kelly turned his phone in to White House tech support this summer complaining that it wasn’t working or updating software properly.

Kelly told the staffers the phone hadn’t been working properly for months, according to the officials.
[…]
Several government officials said it was unclear when — or where — Kelly’s phone was first compromised. It is unclear what data might have been accessed, if any.
[…]
Staffers reviewed the cellphone for several days and tried to decipher what had happened to it, the officials said. Many functions on the phone were not working.

The IT department concluded the phone had been compromised and should not be used further, according to the memo.

5079

No problem. Get Baron on the case! He’s the best at the cyber.

5080
5081

FTA:

Washington (CNN)Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators met this past summer with the former British spy whose dossier on alleged Russian efforts to aid the Trump campaign spawned months of investigations that have hobbled the Trump administration, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Information from Christopher Steele, a former MI-6 officer, could help investigators determine whether contacts between people associated with the Trump campaign and suspected Russian operatives broke any laws.

CNN has learned that the FBI and the US intelligence community last year took the Steele dossier more seriously than the agencies have publicly acknowledged. James Clapper, then the director of national intelligence, said in a January 2017 statement that the intelligence community had “not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable.”

5082

Sounds like they corroborated a lot of it too…

5083
5084

He’s a segment producer on stuff non-related to politics, so I’d like to see that confirmed.

5085

Yeah, the F5 o’clock window is still open, so hopefully someone’ll collaborate it.

5086

(1/9): MINI-THREAD: What does news that Mueller met with the Chief Judge of the D.C. federal court and a group of attorneys mean? https://t.co/PvI5xMWbXL
(2/9): 1/ This is an unusual meeting, so the purpose of this meeting—whatever it was—was out of the ordinary.
(3/9): 2/ The best I can do is give you some educated guesses about possible purposes for the meeting.
(4/9): 3/ The Chief Judge oversees the grand jury program, so this could be related to a leak or a security issue regarding a grand juror.
(5/9): 4/ This could be coordination of security for an upcoming event, such as the arraignment (initial hearing) after an indictment.
(6/9): 5/ Or defense counsel could be challenging a subpoena or order that Mueller served, and the Chief Judge heard the matter in private.
(7/9): 6/ If I had to guess, I’d pick the latter. Usually prosecutors wait until an investigation ends to indict, so they have all the evidence.
(8/9): 7/ Leaks or security issues with a grand jury are rare (but obviously this is a very unusual case).
(9/9): 8/ There may be other unusual possibilities that don’t come immediately to mind, but it’s certainly not something ordinary. /end

5088

SAN FRANCISCO — Google for the first time has uncovered evidence that Russian operatives exploited the company’s platforms in an attempt to interfere in the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the company’s investigation.

The Silicon Valley giant has found that tens of thousands of dollars were spent on ads by Russian agents who aimed to spread disinformation across Google’s many products, which include YouTube, as well as advertising associated with Google search, Gmail, and the company’s DoubleClick ad network, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss matters that have not been made public. Google runs the world’s largest online advertising business, and YouTube is the world’s largest online video site.

The discovery by Google is also significant because the ads do not appear to be from the same Kremlin-affiliated troll farm that bought ads on Facebook – a sign that the Russian effort to spread disinformation online may be a much broader problem than Silicon Valley companies have unearthed so far.